Knowing that I am not alone in my fear of change has never brought me comfort. In fact, I feel ashamed to admit that I am perpetually afraid of change. Every time I go home or come back to Oxford, I am afraid to find just how many things have changed over the course of my absence. Moreover, witnessing change as I am stuck in one place, or another, can be all the more terrifying. Often, I find myself wanting to escape to Budapest from my childhood home, or to London from my college accommodation. At some other points, it takes a lot not to escape from convoluted texts into the comfort zone of procrastination. Luckily, however, there are a number of works I have never had to run from: Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde follows me wherever I go and comforts me when I am confined to a single location.
Broadly speaking, Troilus and Criseyde covers the plot of two lovers on a journey of despair to bliss, and to despair once again. Their story is situated in Troy during the last year of the Trojan War, but much of the military activities are backtracked to highlight the more private and romantic storyline. Nevertheless, the relationship between Troilus and Criseyde ends because of the war: Criseyde is exchanged for a Trojan warrior, Antenor, captured by the Greek army.. The Greeks demand Criseyde, and Diomedes (a Greek soldier) attempts to pursue Criseyde once she is separated from Troilus. Troilus entreats Criseyde to escape the Greek camp, but she, understandably, is scared to leave (soldiers are not famous for their mercy towards fleeing captives). She remains outside of Trojan walls for the rest of the poem. Troilus dies on the battlefield at the end of Book V.
“Double sorwe of Troilus” [double sorrow] appears in line 1, and the famous “From wo to wele, and after out of joie” [from woe to well-being, and afterwards out of joy] follows shortly after in line 4. Chaucer does not deceive us with a notion of stability, he reveals right away the contingency that threatens the idealised illusion of an ever-lasting relationship.. By no means do we expect a happy ending; nevertheless, many readers are swept up in hopeful anticipation over the course of the five books that follow. The emotional rollercoaster of Troilus’s lovesickness, his happiness with his beloved Criseyde, and their final separation pains readers regardless of the forewarning. Truth be told, their journey is a complex web of misguided expectations, moral ambiguities, and coercion, but for the purposes of this article I am focusing on Troilus’s experience of contingency in the present of his world. Chaucer’s characters cannot know the outcome of their story, much like we never know where our decisions may take us. This article aims to find comfort in the timely experience of uncertainty and seeks to mediate the layers of anxiety that arise when we question the future and the past.
Does everything happen for a reason?
I was asked this difficult question over glasses of gin and tonic following a birthday dinner. Being a hopeless romantic and an avid reader of George Eliot, I answered that behind every coincidence there must be a deeper meaning. Pretentious and naïve as it sounds, I believe meaning-making (however illusory) is my cure to contingency––or at least an escape from my perpetual anxiety. I seek an established meaning behind coincidental works of chance and therefore resemble Troilus:
And upon cas bifel that thorugh a route
His eye percede, and so depe it wente,
Til on Criseyde it smot, and there it stente.
And sodeynly he wax therwith astoned,
And gan hir bet biholde in thrifty wise. (I. 271-75)
[And by chance it happened that across the crowd his eye proceeded, and so deep it went until it struck on Criseyde, and there it stopped. And with that suddenly he grew astounded, and began to better behold her in a prudent manner.]
What is described here is a recognition brought about by chance, “cas”, but becomes fateful once the two start to interact, begin a relationship, and are finally separated. In Peter Buchanan’s reading, this moment is significant because the narrator veers away from the linear narrative of the Trojan War and Trojan customs to introduce “Troilus’ immediate experience of surprise.” We, as readers, are not surprised, we know he is fated to enter on a course of love taking him from sorrow to bliss to sorrow again, but we cannot expect Troilus to have this awareness. Indeed, these moments of romance freeze the overarching narrative to dilate “Troilus’ interior discourse, stretching a single moment of chronological time into several stanzas of subjective experience.”
Do we not follow the same pattern? We have our routines and work toward our futures, but spontaneous moments and coincidental encounters make us ruminate, speculate, and to an extent distract us from other aspects of life, even if that lasts only for a couple of minutes. We too have our interior discourses and narratives that structure our experiences. Spontaneous events, happening by chance, are enticing because we did not see it coming. They are the events intruding on our routines that pull us away from the mundane and dazzle our eyes with possibility. In the moment, we cannot know whether such spontaneous events happened for a reason, and even if we would like to believe yes to be an answer, we are yet to find specific causes and consequences. For now, it is excitement we have, meaning arises later.
Narrating spontaneity
Possibilities are by nature contingent. We do not know the outcome. I acknowledge this dynamic to be a vehicle for tragedy in the textual context, but struggle to adapt this contingency when I evaluate my own life. Why would I enter a connection (with people, with my places, with my studies) if it must end? Does opening up always lead to a feeling of emptiness afterwards? Are these connections purely a waste of time? In moments of spontaneity, I do not have the answer, and resemble Troilus once again:
And thoughte, “O Lord, right now rennet my sort
Fully to deye, or han anon comfort!”
And was the first tyme he shulde hire preye
Of love: O mighty Lord, what shal he seye? (II. 1751-7)
[and (he) thought, “Oh Lord, right now my destiny approaches fully to die or gain comfort immediately!” This was the first time he would pray to love: oh mighty Lord, what shall he say?]
My predominant coping mechanism against anxiety is internal narration. Spontaneous encounters with new and unfamiliar things, people, and dynamics become much more tangible and less intimidating once I find a way to integrate them into the structures of life I already know. Slang is a very easy example: unless I know the proper meaning and use of certain phrases, I am anxious about being excluded from social groups already accustomed to these expressions. However, once we speak the common cultural tongue, once my Hungarian mind understands the English phrases, I feel safe again. But what happens if I am left speechless?
As Buchanan emphasises, Troilus cannot “read Criseyde’s true feelings” and “is constantly wracked with anxiety caused by the sheer unpredictability of his own future, which leads him to project imaginary, hypothetical futures onto the blank potentiality before him, none of which are finally actualised.” Troilus develops a great deal of anxiety by virtue of being caught up in contingent possibilities of where his relationship with Criseyde may go. Though retrospectively it is easy to say that he should not have been so hopeful and expectant, the imminent experience of love or infatuation clouds everyone’s judgement. Developing relationships are contingent: anything may happen, from the worst to best-case scenarios.
Swich Fyn
The Middle English “swich fyn” translates to “such an ending.” In my favourite passage, Chaucer’s narrator exclaims:
“Swich fyn hath, lo, this Troilus for love!
[…]
Swich fyn hath false worldes brotelnesse!
And thus bigan his lovyng of Criseyde,
As I have told, and in this wise he deyde.” (V.1800-06)
[Such an ending has Troilus for his love! […] Such an ending has the brittleness of this world! And so began his loving of Criseyde, as I have recounted, and he died in this manner].
Troilus dies on the battlefield around a fortnight after he and Criseyde are forced to go on separate ways. What excited me about this passage is the paradox of endings (the stanza is governed by the anaphoric repetition of “swich fyn”) and yet rolls back to the beginning of Troilus’s “lovyng of Criseyde.” Though critics never pin down the precise purpose of the text, this section, in my reading, speaks to the beauty of tragedy. Troilus’s experience of love heightens not only the romantic tragedy, but the grief we feel when he dies. Furthermore, even if Chaucer’s narrator denounces the “brittleness” of the world, he immediately circles back to the theme of love. Criseyde takes the privileged position in the last two lines of the stanza, forming one end of the rhyming couplet.
Lines 1805-6 single-handedly pushed me to heal. They are a reminder that we do not have to remove ourselves from change. We are excited about (and intimidated by) contingent events. We may share these moments of spontaneity with other people but may also struggle with the fear of those moments coming to an end. The tragedy of Troilus and Criseyde has come to an end as well but acknowledges the vital significance of the love affair in Troilus’s life, right at the moment of death where chance and contingency cease to govern his existence.
Without contingency, excitement, anticipation, and ultimate disappointment, we would not have this couplet in Book 5. Without tragedy, we would not have this beautiful piece of reflection where Criseyde takes centre stage even as Troilus’s course on love has ended. She has not lost significance, only the circumstances have changed. Now we, as readers, are free to leave the page and find what else this life has to offer after the tragedy of Troilus and Criseyde has come to “swich fyn.”